Although faculty response to an introductory writing across the curriculum workshop at La Salle University (Pennsylvania) was almost uniformly positive, responses to an advanced workshop were mixed. La Salle's basic workshop is framed by the two dimensions which remain the major theoretical concerns of writing across the curriculum: the function…

This paper uses two case studies to explore the risk and opportunities of writing from students' personal experiences. Anthony, a high-achieving, Hispanic fifth-grader, and Anita, a low-achieving, African-American sixth-grader, participated in a writing workshop in which students kept notebooks of their personal experiences and reflections. The…

One of the first papers that Freshman Composition instructors still teach is the expressive or personal experience essay. Native English Speaking (NES) instructors who teach expressive writing believe that students looking back on their past selves gain new perspectives or reach new understanding of themselves or their world. This discovery often…

A study explored the constructive, collaborative process of a group of writers under circumstances which throw light on dimensions of meaning making. The writers were college freshmen receiving "process instruction" and working collaboratively in a writing course. Collaborative planning is a loosely structured planning process in which…

Teachers have allowed the social studies and science areas of instruction to become isolated from vibrant language arts skills, resulting in deficiencies in reading and writing skills within the different content areas. An 8- to 10-week biography unit was developed for a fourth-grade social studies course in an attempt to give students a stronger…

This is a compilation of 18 pathfinders (i.e., a bibliographic instruction aid) on black dance in America, prepared by graduate students in the "Information Resources in the Humanities" and the "Information Resources in the Social Sciences" classes in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of…

A faculty member at the University of Toronto (Ontario) developed an informal survey designed to assess her undergraduate students' views of the writing they did during the course of their university studies. The survey consisted of a 2-page questionnaire that could be completed in 5 to 10 minutes; it was administered to 722 students during the…

Beginning with the premise that writing cannot be separated from the subject written about, composition teachers should address themselves to what their students are learning in the process of writing. Some writing courses introduce students to great books but those books are usually written only by white men. Others open students to multicultural…

As the semester progresses, students in an autobiographical writing class at Slippery Rock University (Pennsylvania) develop a new awareness of themselves and their own places in a larger universe as well as an appreciation of themselves as writers. Language theory supports what the instructor observes in her students' writing development. A…

Family stories, told and retold, become important vehicles in shaping the lives of family members. Knowing and understanding family narratives can aid students in understanding their families' histories, communication patterns, and meanings. The stories are a cohesive element for holding the family together, and may also capture the essence of the…

An assignment that has proven successful in teaching "Communication Theories" (a senior-level capstone course at Northern Kentucky University) is "The Application Folder." The goal of the assignment is for students to apply concepts from the course in their everyday life. Students monitor and analyze what they watch, read, and…

The point of view that teachers use in responding to students' writing affects the kinds of dramatized presences that teacher responses create. Such presences make available a range of reading and writing roles that students may adopt or reject. For a dramatic presence to be felt by a reader, a writer must select and sustain a clear means of…

In choosing to have students use the computer in unstructured writing activities, the instructor may prefer to cover basics during classroom sessions and have students use technological aids to expand on these basics in outside assignments. Out-of-class composition assignments force students to create with these basics on their own. Students use…

This instructor's manual provides numerous suggestions for observational activities, out-of-class assignments and evaluative strategies for undergraduate and graduate students, and follows the organization of the textbook, "Applying Educational Psychology in the Classroom." The book is organized into two sections--the instructor's manual and test…

This handbook provides the secondary language arts teacher with a series of meaningful activity options which use the newspaper as the learning resource. The handbook discusses the purposes of language arts education, the advantages of using the newspaper as a resource, and the relationship between the two. Taken from numerous books, kits, guides,…